


The Arthropods

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Alternian Empire, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Loyalty, M/M, Military, Moderate to Heavy Military Kinks Probably, Mutant Eridan, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, This Is Such a Trainwreck, War Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5281121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'll redeem himself for the disability he was born with and glorify the empire that is everything to him (<i>she</i> is everything to him), in one fell swoop, if it all goes according to plan.</p><p>This is Eridan Ampora, though.  It takes him about the span of twenty-four hours for him to fuck this all up and the best part is that he doesn't even know it yet.</p><p> </p><p>That fuck up's name is Sergeant Vantas and he sure comes equipped with a lot of shouting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Arthropods

**Author's Note:**

> To be clear, I do have updates for both the Grub Cage and Ad Hoc written out in full. I'm just in that special writer hell where I am totally unable to tell which parts are crap and which parts aren't. You get your chapters when my brain quits fucking with me and lets me edit without pretending everything with letters is actually a mystical set of hieroglyphics to be rearranged every time I start cursing.
> 
> Awesomesauce.
> 
> I know this sort of breaks my rule about only posting two ongoing things at a time (except for the one Gamkar thing, but we don't talk about that), but I do vaguely remember this story being not completely crap before his latest existential writing crisis, so I figured it wouldn't make your eyes bleed in the interim between my brain cells giving me the good drugs. It'll satisfy my need to do something other than be frustrated too.
> 
> Awesomesauce x 2.

You are frankly too damn highly ranked for this job and every single one of them knows it and is watching you board the ship with glee. One less seadweller to compete for top positioning. And more to the point, which one of them doesn’t despise you?   
  
You’re also the Empress’s coddamn moirail, so not a single one of them will ever be good enough to lick your boots.   
  
It was Fef’s idea that you be given a proper imperial send-off, full military regalia on every hide, them saluting as you walk by. You only just managed to talk her out of a formal army salute to your name. You know it’s her way of saying she’s sorry for this, but you wish no one knew about what you were going to be doing. You wish the history books remembered your papping hand and your victories along the Farthest Borders, but not this.   
  
Once you’re aboard you, well—who exactly is forgetting whose diamond you are? You’ve heard all of this before. Your fingers drum impatience, and fins (your poor fins) flutter their last free for perigees. Or sweeps. You swallow, nod, and damn well give no sign of discomfort. You are Prince Eridan Ampora. Oh, are you supposed to cross enemy lines as a spy? How dull.   
  
If it was anyone but Fef who asked you this—   
  
But she did. Debating it now is pointless. The facts are simple. You’re losing the war. The rebel forces know the land better and while they wouldn’t dare venture into your territory, they’re talented at poisoning the seas and forcing your kind out.  
  
Or well, _most_ of your kind. You know what everyone aboard this ship is thinking as they prepare to take away your dignity. You know what kind of—well, you’ve heard that all before. You have not needed seawater since the day you were hatched and can barely stay under for thirty minutes. Presumably when you die, you’ll stop disgracing their empress.  
  
Your mutation makes you ideal to pretend to be a lowblood.   
  
Only three of the six wretched lowblood armies are still around, and the six were once seven, but the longer this war drags, the more it favors their numbers. Whisper Army isn’t the largest, but it is the most problematic, because you cannot track them. You cannot plan offensives, because they show up just long enough to strike, then vanish again, forcing your people to keep to the defensive instead of landing a decisive victory. The commander is a brilliant tactician, and does not seem to exist. Kill that troll, and you will bring the shitbloods low. They’re just not smart enough to keep going without the troll in charge.   
  
You clench your fangs and hold up a hand to stop the assistant babbling figures at you, like you might have forgotten how important this is. “Enough,” you tell them sharply. You smile, and remove your glasses. They’ll need the space to work. They could do it themselves; they’ll do as you please, but you just want this to be your decision for the next thirty seconds. “Make me hideous.”   
  
-  
  
You inspect yourself in a mirror when the anesthesia wears off. Your eyes have an oliveblood’s pigment instead of your brilliant amethyst, and they stare dully from your face. You’ll have to take pills to keep the synthetic chroma in place, but you will be provisioned handsomely by your contacts. Far more chilling are the sides of your face, your jaw, your earfins. They’re all unrecognizable. Your fins are gone. You understand that they are intact—you outright refused any surgical removal of your proudest features—but they are taped and sewn underneath a new layer of skin where they cannot be seen and cannot move. You have been assured that removing the skin on your own will lead to tragedy and heartbreak, which you believe, because when you touch your newly bald face, the skin where your fins should be has sensation and it’s _horrible_.   
  
The ears are just prosthetics, and you knew there would be hearing loss, but everything is tinny and muted and it’s beginning to sink in that this really will be you for months, half-deaf and mortifying to look at, like you were born a low traitor like the rest of them. Your face is still your own but it’s not—you can hardly stand to look at you. The purple streak in your hair is obviously gone, and your horns—though they will grow back over a few decade sweeps—have been filed down to the sorts of stunted growths lowbloods have. Your gills are flattened and will need therapy if they are ever going to operate normally after this. Your medical aid suggested you not bother.   
  
And this may be the last you the world will ever know. You might die like this. Even your blood, if it is spilled, will come out dyed by the same pills you’re taking for your eyes. Dyed a horrid, foul color that has nothing to do with you.   
  
You’ve never claimed not to be a little vain about your appearance, but cod, can it really turn your stomach like this? When a soldier comes in with a change of clothes for you, you’re eager for it. You don’t want to be seen like this. Your finery does not belong on this troll you’ve become and while what lowbloods wear are little better than rags, your set of rags comes with a hooded cloak that you can pull over your face.  
  
At least this time no one sees you off. The spies were able to give you an approximate location of where the Whisper Army forces are setting down. As the ship pulls off, you take off running. You go a fair bit, letting the other officers shout after you, weaving in the trees, ducking lower the way you’ve seen the enemy do time and time again. Once or twice you let them catch up to you, land a few hits before you thrash free and it repeats—and then finally there are shouts from the forest itself and the first landdweller pulls out of the shadows with a club longer than your arm and takes a swing that lands with a sickening crunch. Another pulls you backwards with a sweaty arm around your shoulders.   
  
Credit where credit is due, the officers just take off running like they were never hit. They’re trained to sprint and they make it away, howling abuse towards your rescuers, the very picture of cowards deprived of a kill.   
  
It must work okay, with you heaving for breath and bleeding olive. The lowblood with a grip on you stares down, all wild hair and very, very bright blue eyes. “You okay?” She asks, beaming. “I mean, it looked like you were doing pretty craptacular out there.” You try to answer, but your carefully rehearsed speech comes out as a slurred moan, and you’re pretty sure you got your own name wrong. Your acting is very good. Also, you probably have a concussion. The lowblood laughs and hitches you up onto her shoulder. “Oof! Fuck, you’re heavy. Well, come on, let’s get you to the sergeant.”   
  
The sergeant, you are sort of appalled to discover, is roughly half your height and makes up for the size purely in pressurized volume that launches itself into your skull. After the first screech, you are perfectly willing to assume the fetal position and vomit. The sergeant keeps on chewing out your grinning lowblooded rescuer for a good ten minutes and then rounds on you and realizes you’re injured, at which point he gets briefly louder and you do throw up and fortunately, pass out.   
  
When you wake up you’re tied down on a cot with sopor patches up your arms and there’s another lowblood who lights up at you while your skin crawls. “Let me just get Sergeant Vantas,” he says, and then totters away as you deeply regret ever having opened your eyes.   
  
Blessedly, however, this time the sergeant keeps his voice down. Maybe not too far down, because unlike the first lowblood, you can hear him clearly through the prosthetic ears, but you figure he must be making an effort. In the dim light of what you assume is the infirmary, you can’t make out a lot more detail—Vantas has some wildly tangled hair and seems to have teeth a little too big for his mouth, because he enunciates just as sharply as a seadweller getting trained out of the compounded accent.   
  
“Feeling less like shit?” He says sympathetically. You risk a nod and the sergeant nods back. “Yeah, those seafuckers really did a number on you.” You swell with anger, but hold your tongue and Sergeant Vantas snorts. “Glare away, citizen. You want to return the favor next time, get your ass some training.” He prods you in the chest and snaps your way, “We get new recruits like you every fucking week, desperate to prove how devoted to the cause they are, how _tough_ , and you know what we do with them?”  
  
“I don’t know,” you snap, frustrated with being tied down and aching and not having fins to flare. “Stick them on the front lines and use them to soak up the enemy’s fire?”   
  
“Ha,” the sergeant says dryly and leans away. “No. We send them the fuck back home, because this war is being fought to save lives, not to kill stupid littler fucksicles that have no business being in a battle.” He grins, and yes, those are a lot of teeth. They would be intimidating in anyone else’s mouth, but on the sergeant, they just look goofy and you can’t help but frown. “Sometimes we wash them behind the ears too.”   
  
You reluctantly snort with amusement, and Vantas nods to himself. “Yeah, I’d say you’re back in your pan. You freaked the hell out, sleeping without sopor.” He fiddles with the straps on your arms and you try not to feel grateful. You’re owed freedom, at least as far as they know. The sergeant helps you sit up. You discover you need help when your body lights up with aches. You don’t question it.   
  
You assume, after all, that the process of delivering you to the rebel army was a volunteer job. That’s how you would have done it. There are plenty who despise the Empress’s mutant lover.   They made it convincing.  
  
The sergeant is brusque, but manages to avoid prodding anything that would make you snap at him and gets you a glass of water that tastes, frankly, horrible. You’re so thirsty you guzzle it down anyway.   
  
“So,” Vantas folds your arm. “You’re military?” You almost spit your water back out. The sergeant waves a hand, “No, don’t tell me, I don’t care. Congratulations, Whisper Army doesn’t really give a fuck about division lines, so you’re not going to get strung up unless you killed someone’s family and they recognize you. Or unless _you_ have a problem with Whisper.” He raises his eyebrows until you shake your head mutely and then laughs. You belatedly suppose that was a joke. “Jegus. Lighten up, kid. I’m not here to shoot you, I’m here to offer you a job.”  
  
“I thought you sent new recruits like me home,” you say, croaking a little bit because wow, your throat was really dry after running that much distance.   
  
“Well now,” the sergeant says with a wicked leer that makes you, against all odds, actually sort of like him. “We don’t see many getting the crap kicked out of them and then standing up and landing two of our officers in adjacent cots because he fell asleep off his sopor.” When your eyes widen, he waves a hand again. “Ha, they’re fine. Want the job? It’s grunt work, but if you accept, I get to feed you.”  
  
You say, with unexpected honesty, “I will do literally anything for a grubsteak.” And Vantas gives you a sharp little grin, offers his hand, and helps you up.  
  
-  
  
It is most certainly not grubsteak they serve here, it is horrible, and you cannot swallow any of it. Vantas clatters into the seat in front of you. Under the pale light spilling from greasy lamps and periodic candles in the mess tent, you can tell that he’s rust.   
  
You’re not entirely surprised. The very lowest bloods—you hear good things about them. Naturally docile, not very violent, more than willing to serve the Empire before indigo and blue landdwellers came along and put ridiculous thoughts in their heads. Vantas takes an enthusiastic bite of his slop and groans in thunderous pleasure. Your eyebrows about go off your head because you cannot understand what his taste buds must be like.   
  
“Mmm,” he groans again. “That is the foulest stuff of nightmares.” You almost laugh and he motions for you to take a bite, which you do gingerly.   
  
“Ugh,” you splutter. “Predigested?”   
  
“Farted out some worm’s waste chute somewhere, presumably,” Vantas says with understated tragedy, and takes another bite.   
  
In this fashion, trading metaphors for how insidiously horrid the food is, you work your way through a plate, the sergeant gives you a pair of boots and a cutlass, and you are put to work chopping wood. It is exactly the sort of backbreaking, menial labor to which you are not accustomed to, and Vantas, who is apparently in charge of the infirmary as well as having half the divisions in camp reporting to him, bandages your blisters and tells you, without a trace of sarcasm or sympathy, “We’re putting you on the easy details while you’re injured.”  
  
“Don’t worry,” you groan at him, “I’ll amaze you all enough that you’ll never be able to operate without me again.”   
  
-  
  
Vantas isn’t your squad sergeant, which you’re fairly disappointed about, nor is he the boot camp instructor you get shunted in with. There are very few allowances made for you, you discover. You work, you drill, you pass out—that seems to be the general order of things. They feed you the foulest slime you have ever ingested in your life and you magically do not become violently ill from it. You could have been hewing trees since dusk and they will still make you run the full track, perform every exercise with your hands bleeding, execute your drills until you get them right. No one cares that you just arrived or were injured or worked all day.   
  
Your drill instruction was nothing like this exercise in degradation; you were higher than the instructors and they all knew it. You did enough to prove that you could carry out their commands with effortless ease—but only if you desired to. Here, you’re lower on the spectrum than one of your instructors and a bit higher than the second, but you try to do what everyone else is doing. There are bluebloods working frantically under a yellowblood’s orders. It’s a little alarming, but clearly the hierarchy is not blood-based.  
  
No one treats you any differently either, which is an entirely separate beast than not being given allowances. No one treats you like a prince, sure, but more to the point, no one treats you like a mutant anymore. For the first time in your life, you’re not one. You may be a spy for the enemy preparing to betray them all, but you’re no mutant, and you have to admit you enjoy that.   
  
There’s something else you enjoy too.   
  
Sergeant Vantas, you have discovered, is a sort of ubiquitous fixture in this camp. You’ve been asking around, trying to make friends and connections, figure out how the Whisper Army runs. You figure that if you understand the hierarchy, you’ll learn where to find the leader. All you’ve gathered is that this isn’t the whole of the Shadow Army, just some sort of roving outpost—every few days the camp is packed up and you all carry it on your backs to some new location—often specified by Sergeant Vantas.   
  
He just sort of runs things. The infirmary is his stomping ground, his squad is the biggest and as far as you can tell, the best—not just the most highbloods, but the most effective smartasses around and you can’t help but be insulted that you weren’t chosen—and the rest of the squads, failing to find appropriately high-ranked leadership, will zero in on his shouting and bring their problems to him. You have not once met a troll with something nasty to say to him—there’s the sort of ribbing that goes on in infantry, sure, but there’s genuine fondness behind it and Vantas seems to know everyone by name and have a private list of specific reasons to bitch each troll out given the slightest provocation. This includes you. He’ll rake you over the coals at the top of his lungs, flushing darker with rage, going and going until your jaw drops and you don’t know whether to be insulted or amused or _impressed_ , just by his damn lungs, and the first time that happened you panicked all night thinking you’d made him your enemy before someone shoved you his way at dusk. Vantas promptly towed you over for some errand or another and complained loudly about what a shitty job the snickering soldier to your right was doing until you were shaking with laughter.  
  
It’s just the way he is—loud and cantankerous and as far as you can tell, incapable of sustaining genuine antipathy for anyone here. You find it a very admirable trait, this compassion. In a disarming way, it reminds you of Fef. He’ll terrorize anyone who doesn’t work hard enough the minute he thinks they can do better, won’t make allowances for crybabies or cowards, but shows everyone the ropes just the same and doesn’t ever torture trolls for their mistakes. Even when he’s seething at some failure, he brings it to an end as soon as his point is across and it’s _effective_. You may be having trouble telling what the purpose of this camp is, but you can tell that it is being done well. Everyone is always busy and exhausted and motivated to do their task.   
  
You cannot exist here and hate Vantas. Many of the others, yes; for incompetence, for their slurs against your kind, for pettiness and vulgarity of character, but your tiny rustblood battle sergeant reminds you of why Fef is so determined not to eradicate her landdwelling subjects. Many are lazy and stupid, but then there are trolls like this.   
  
Some are worth saving.   
  
Vantas, you think, may like you too. Or maybe he’s like this with everyone? He’ll join you jogging sometimes, demand you unfold the story of your past few days when you’re already gasping for breath (being in drills as a lowblood has taught you that you may be very capable, but only acting when you feel like it has not improved your stamina), or slam his tray down with you in the mess hall and abuse you until you finish your disgusting slop, or call you over for errands and extra work you can’t bring yourself to resent because he’ll be hard at work with you and there will be snatches of conversation between.   
  
You see him in the full light nearly two weeks of being in this camp and being too exhausted and worn down to gather any intelligence that doesn’t come from idle chatter in mess or well-timed conversations near where you’re chopping down yet another coddamn shit-awful burn-them-all fucking tree (the skin on your hands has started to toughen up, though; you are grudgingly proud of this). Sergeant Vantas is writing in his tent—he shares it with four other sergeants and compared to where you sleep, the cramped, tiny space is alarmingly spacious. He’s got a lamp burning and a stack of papers and he’s sending you out to photograph the stars and bring him the polaroids. And when he looks up—it’s rare for you to see him at all because light fixtures are used sparingly and these woods completely blot out the moon unless you climb a tree a good ways up—you see his face clearly for once. He has features that look delicate and brutish at once, as though he’s a patchwork of two different trolls. Square jaw, soft eyes, a flat nose, wriggler cheeks, familiar kinked snarl of hair, tiny horns crowning him. And in the middle of that, eyes that are far, far too bright to be rust. You blink at them as you hand the letter over and the corner of Vantas’s mouth twitches.   
  
“See something you like, private?”   
  
You actually “eep” and skitter back out to get him his next photograph, hear him snickering at your back. You can’t help but stare each time you come back in and you think, it is almost indulgently, that Vantas lifts his eyes up to you each time for you to see the bright ring of fire burning in them.   
  
He’s a mutant.   
  
He’s a mutant and he’s making no secret of that—the others must know; someone would see and word would travel. You were pardoned from the cull, on account of being a credit to trollkind (and really on account of Fef claiming you as hers and daring anyone to come try and wipe you out). You don’t know much about the ideology of the Shadow Army or the other lowblood factions, but you imagine now that perhaps being a mutant is something pardonable.   
  
Vantas knows your name and will surprise you with it occasionally between the usual biting forms of address—generally he refers to people by truly vile curse words, or by “kid” (with no bearing on age; he has called a grizzled jadeblood major “kid” and gotten his hair ruffled while they both laughed)—but he may shoot “Eridan” at you when you’re not expecting it. It feels very fond to you, although you’re not sure how, because it’s not like you’re having any private conversations or tender moments. It’s just the way he adds it into sentences after you’re hurrying after him, eager to help him with whatever task he has this time or continue a conversation from the day before, like he’s insisting he has some claim over you after watching you vomit and punch people.   
  
“Thanks, Eridan,” Vantas calls after you casually when you’re done climbing trees and gathering photos. You’re in the middle of brushing leaves and bark out of your hair and you halfway turn around. Vantas is bent back over his letters—you smile, shake your head, and move along.   
  
-  
  
“It’s Karkat,” Vantas says, slamming his tray down at breakfast. He then launches into a tirade about what, you have no earthly idea, because he is referring to everyone by ever-changing obscene designations that mostly seem to center around sexual euphemisms for profound stupidity and possibly arthropods. You blink and nod a lot and sip today’s slightly broth-textured slop. Vantas eventually runs out of time to bitch at you, spends another five minutes heartily cursing out what you assume is the construct of chronology, and then dashes off to take care of everyone again while you stare after him in bemusement.   
  
You have no idea what to respond to that with.   
  
About a week later, you, tentatively call after him as he stomps away—he just showed you how to fix the knots you’re using on wrapping up camp for another night—“Karkat?” He wheels around and grunts at you. You grin.  
  
“Well?” He snaps, you shake your head, keep grinning, pleased by your guessed discovery and by the fact that he bothered at all, and Vantas—Karkat Vantas—goes off at you, ranting away, snarling and spitting on the ground like someone completely disgusting before stomping away, leaving you helplessly, wretchedly fond.


End file.
